Does your child seem to forget things from one day to the next? Are morning routines like the movie “Groundhog Day” where your child can’t seem to remember even the simplest thing they did the day before in order to get ready for school? The good news is that there are some great games to increase memory skills, and they’re so fun you can get away with giving them as Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa presents.

Here are our recommendations for the best games to increase memory.

Toca Life: City If your child hasn’t experienced the wonder and self-led entertainment and learning that come with Toca Boca’s “digital toys,” Toca Life: City is a fantastic introduction. The best gender-neutral virtual dollhouse any child could ask for, the sandbox game play of Toca Life: City, challenges working memory as kids navigate from store to park to apartment with friends of all ages, sizes, colors, and shapes and accessories for any interest. Now where did I leave my friend, the walking-talking hamburger?

Toca Hair Salon is an oldie but a goodie. With the same kind of experimental, digital game play, Toca Hair Salon allows kids to style the hair of multiple characters with a variety of tools. Users are challenged to learn the function and best applications of these tools, exercising working memory skills in an imaginative and unstructured way.

Toca Life: City and Toca Hair Salon are on sale right now, along with a vast number of other Toca Boca games. See the Google Play store and the iTunes app store to snatch them up.

Social Chess If you’re looking for a more structured game, chess is king. The centuries-old board game gets a cool makeover in Social Chess, which allows users to compete against friends, strangers, the computer, and even themselves. As with traditional chess, Social Chess challenges users to keep the multiple possibilities for every piece on the board in mind as they plan and make moves. Remembering strategies, abilities, and rules of thumb can help your child to become a champ at chess and at remembering in general.

Pines to Vines and Seashores to Sea Floors For the pint-sized science enthusiast in your life, you can’t go wrong with the Crack the Books series of interactive textbooks. Books like Pines to Vines and Seashores to Sea Floors challenge kids’ working memory through reading practice as they take virtual tours of the forests and oceans of the world. With multiple reading level options and interactive visuals, your kids will be thoroughly absorbed as they explore and learn about ecosystems, the roles they play in the biosphere, and the impact of humans.

 

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When it comes to buying your child video games for Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa you want to find a game your kids will love but which also has substance and learning opportunities, making the game “digitally nutritious.” LearningWorks for Kids can help you find these games with our Learning Quotient (LQ) system, which we use to rate games with a combined Brain Score and a Fun Score. So if you want to get your kids something that they will love that has a bit of digital nutrition (it’s actually good for them), use our game search or keep an eye on our blog in the coming days for more lists of fun and digitally nutritious apps and games for holiday giving.